Elder statesman and former
governor of Old Anambra State, Chukwuemeka Ezeife, has reiterated the need for
Nigeria to be restructured.

Speaking at a book launch “We
Can’t All Be Wrong, Nigeria and the Restructuring Debate,” by Dr Ethelbert
Okere, in Abuja, Ezeife said Nigeria would break if not restructured.

The elder statesman blamed past
military governments for the current structural defects generating problems in
the country.

He maintained that restructuring
remains the only panacea to Nigeria’s problem of disunity, adding that the
current structure, which confers undue advantage on certain regions, portends
danger to the existence of Nigeria as a country.

According to Ezeife, “What we
mean by restructuring is returning to a structure agreed by our founding
fathers; a structure that worked and the World Bank commended Nigeria. We mean
a structure which were responsibilities, where all the money used by the
government came from the regions.

“The people monitored what the
governors did with their money then. It is not about going to Abuja, to get
federal revenues and spending them as they choose, without any supervision from
anybody. We are talking about returning to a structure which vested powers on
the regions as federating units.

“We must go back to that
structure, do what we used to do then and things will begin to work again.
Otherwise, we are just waiting for extinction of this country. I want to
challenge all of us that believe that the amalgamation of this country in 1914
was a disaster.

“It is not true because God used
the instrumentality of British imperialism to give Africa a rallying point and
big brotherhood…”

“That is exactly God’s purpose
for Nigeria. He made Nigeria the greatest concentration of blacks on the face
of the earth. Have we imagined what these tiny ethnic groups in Nigeria would
have done if we did not amalgamate? God gave us everything to achieve the
assignment he gave us- planet, geophysical structure, no earthquakes, no
volcano, no hurricanes, no typhoons and other tsunamis.

“Remember that the northern
military created more states and local governments with all of them getting
money from the federal government. We must understand why some people are
unhappy. We must find a way of making them less unhappy but talking against
restructuring is talking arrant nonsense.

“For instance, Lagos has 20 LGAs
like Sokoto state at one time, but today Lagos still has 20 LGAs while Sokoto
has 89 and all of them are getting money from the centre. It is the unfair
advantages pile up on some groups of Nigerians by some region in uniform. We
must therefore restructure to know where the problem is.

“The military which ruled Nigeria
all these while ruined Nigeria. Restructuring means retracing our steps to see
how we can make the country meet her mandate destiny and God’s intention and
purpose for her. I don’t want Nigeria to break up but the only way to avoid
that is through restructuring.”